


There was a Girl

by Winterling42



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ep. 87, Gen, Missing Scene, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Before the start of a new adventure, Caleb is greeted by an old friend...
Relationships: Astrid/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61





	There was a Girl

**Author's Note:**

> this entire thing is going to be obsolete by next Thursday and I am honestly fine with that. Sometimes you just gotta write.

"There was a girl," Caleb said softly, barely breathing. Astrid was just inside the window, her every muscle tensed--to flee or to attack, he couldn't tell. He spoke very quietly, because the rest of the Nein were sprawled out in the room around him, sleeping like the dead. Well, not like the dead. Not quite yet. "In Rosohna, there was a girl who said she knew you." 

Astrid's face, difficult to see in the unlit room, twitched. He knew it was her, though--he would always know her, the slope of her shoulders and the shape of her skull. The deft, gloved hands that were so conspicuously empty. "In Ghor Dranas?" she said at last, her voice as stiff as stone. 

Caleb took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He stood, with both hands raised, tilting his head towards the door in invitation. Astrid only stood, still and quiet as a statue, until he went and opened it for her. He had to step over Caduceus to do so, the long-limbed firbolg having claimed the thickest layer of carpets first thing. In bed behind him, Nott stirred by did not wake. Caleb did not look back at her as he went out into the hallway to wait for Astrid--he did not _look_ at any of them. 

Astrid stepped easily around the sprawled limbs of Yasha and Jester, barely even glancing at the ground as she danced silently across it. She had always been the better dancer. 

Daleth had paid for enough rooms for every member of the Mighty Nein to sleep alone--Caleb simply went to the one across the hall and unlocked it, again going first into the space. Every second his back was turned on Astrid was like a moorbounder screaming in his ear: she was a _threat_ , she was going to _kill him_...but if she'd come here to do that, she would have done so already. And there was a certain amount of...not trust, but patience, that he had to earn. 

"What was her name?" he asked, turning to face Astrid again, putting his back to a wall. "The Vollstrecker you lost in...in Ghor Dranas?" 

She was still standing in the doorway, unwilling to completely come inside. But the hallway was better lit--he could see her chest heaving like she'd just run a mile, he could see...ah, her face was so much older now. But it was still her face. He supposed his must bear some resemblance to the children they'd once been--Trent had seemed to have no trouble recognizing him. 

"Why do you care?" she asked, not particularly sharp but...short. Impatient. "All this time, Bren, and you want to talk about some failure? A girl on her first mission who botched it up badly enough to be _captured_." There was all the old disdain in her voice, all the old pride. Caleb did not bother telling her how quickly he had discarded pride and disdain, once he'd gotten out of the asylum. 

"There is so much I want to say to you," he told her, and the words cut him like residuum. "So much that has...changed."

Finally she took a step into the room, though she did not close the door. Perhaps--though this thought was very small and fleeting--perhaps she was afraid of _him_. Which would be ridiculous, because he was still him and she was still Astrid. "Then _tell me_ ," she said, and for the very first time tonight he heard real emotion creep into her voice. A fraction of the pain and love and shame and guilt that he was feeling, he could see in her clenched fists, the way she leaned forward like a kite pulled on a string. " _Tell me what happened_." 

Caleb took another deep breath, breathed out another shaky exhale. He shook his head a little, and Astrid hissed like a snake. 

She was perhaps more like the Inevitable End than he would have admitted, to the others. 

"I don't know...if I can," he risked a glance up, catching her eyes. She held him there, nearly vibrating with the intensity of her stare. " _I_ have changed, Astrid." 

She growled and turned away, marched angrily to the window and opened it. Even the air here was familiar, the smells of spring in the Shimmer Ward so different from the muck and sprouting things of Blumenthal. He remembered his first year as a student--

"He lied," Caleb said, abruptly. Astrid did not turn, but she went still. "About--about many things, but most of all about our par--"

Astrid hissed again, wordlessly, and he fell silent. He could see her shoulders shaking. He wanted _so badly_ to do this right, to have this _work_. But he didn't know how. He needed the others, he needed Nott's bravery and Beau's intelligence and Fjord's charm and...Astrid was laughing. It was a choked, bitter laughter, broken enough to sound like sobs when he couldn't see her face. But it was definitely laughter. 

"I waited for you, you know," she said at last, in Zemnian. "I waited for you to get better, to _recover._ " Ah, he had known how much this was going to hurt. He was braced for the pain, but her words still struck him like knives. "Eleven years? And you were _useless_. Of course he lied to us, Bren. We needed the lie to do what had to be done. But then we grew up. Well, some of us." 

"It doesn't bother you?" he asked in the same language. He could barely speak the words through the thicket of thorns in his throat. "That we murdered innocent people--innocent people who had done nothing but love us--"

"Love?" Astrid snapped, spun around to face him. Her hands were braced against the window sill, like she still couldn't decide if she was coming or going. "Love is weak. Love doesn't get you what you need, not ever." 

Caleb opened his mouth, then closed it. Took a few deep, regular breaths in silence. How could he make her _see_? 

"What happened to me..." he said, placing each word delicately before him. Like counting spell components. "Was that I realized what had been done to us was wrong. That _he_ was...wrong." He paused, here, because he had never said that before. Trent Ikithon was wrong. He was a bastard, and a sadist, and a very bad man....but he had been their Lehrer. The source of all knowledge, all things. 

He was wrong. Caleb straightened, a little, and found Astrid staring at him again. Still. "No one should go through what we did." he told her, and somewhere, some _how_ \--he believed it. "Our parents should still be alive. He broke us and remade us into monsters, but we _do not have to stay that way_." 

Astrid was shaking her head, slowly, but Caleb barrelled forward, words running through his mouth as quickly as he could think them. Quicker. "I am not saying it is easy, or painless, but I am _alive_ now, Astrid, and I should not be, and I even think I have made a difference for the better. Here, now, doing things to save lives instead of take them--" 

"Enough," she snapped. Instantly he fell silent, but he was still watching her. Still waiting for...something. Astrid only breathed for a moment or two, her hands curling and uncurling into fists. "I think..." as she spoke she gathered herself, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin just so. "I think you were a coward, Bren, and you broke. Your mistakes do not effect me any longer." She sighed, looking down at him somehow despite being two inches shorter. "I should not have come." 

Caleb couldn't help it--he closed his eyes and swayed with the weight of those words. With the crushing pain of them. _You were foolish to expect anything else_ , his mind whispered, but it didn't matter. They still hurt. 

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked, numbly. 

There was a too-long pause before Astrid said, "No. He still has uses for you." 

Caleb nodded. The 'peace talks' were a sham, and they both knew it, but this was Rexxentrum. Many things that were true here went unsaid. "Don't--" he glanced up, just a twitch if his head, to see her pause in the window. "Don't come for me," he whispered, and it was as much a plea as a warning. "Afterwards. Don't let him send you or Eodwulf." 

He could see the answer in her scowl, in the glare she sent him before diving out of the window without another word. _How dare you_ , that look said, and just as fierce and familiar underneath, _I go where he sends me_. 

**Author's Note:**

> you know who the Scourgers remind me of? that one assassin guy from Serenity. all 'oh we're DEFINITELY monsters but we're necessary to make the world better'
> 
> come find me on tumblr at [critical-ramblings](https://www.critical-ramblings.tumblr.com)!


End file.
